How are they unreliable?.

Never had a problem with mine - bought it on last year's Black Friday and it's been bang on.

Don't agree with it being only worthwhile for streaming PC games either. It's great as a standalone console with GeForce Now and, as had been said, makes a great media server with Plex.

If all you're after is a cheap Kodi streaming box then yes that'd make this overkill.

What I like about this machine is that it's slick, well built, fast and reliable. Perhaps better suited to those of us that don't mind spending the time tweaking it to get the best out of it.

Can't live without mine. Snap it up and voted hot

I decided I wanted one of these for Kodi but was puzzled why they were so scarce. Even the Nvidia site had no stock. Then I found out today, production has been discontinued by Nvidia as they are expected to launch the replacement mark 2 in January at CES. Price for these on ebay is rising as they get hard to find, I guess the price will drop soon after the new one is released.

Overall I got a very good deal. Should not have sent me a broken controller and if you describe something as like new it should be. Had I not been given such a good refund I too would have considered sending back. Amazon France customer service isn't as good as Amazon UK in my opinion. The warehouse deals should be better, quality control clearly an issue in your case.

you can email in English on the contact page

No dice. All they offered was €30 and a €5 voucher. I would have maybe been content with this, but yesterday I noticed another problem with the Shield or rather its power supply, it makes a loud buzzing noise.

Apparently its a very common problem: https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/885536/shield-tv-power-supply-makes-buzzing-noise/

People have RMA'd the PS but its a roll of the dice whether or not you get a silent one.

Going to return for a full refund. Thankfully my Mi Box just arrived from the US and that was only £59.

Thanks I'll give that a go. Did you contact [email protected]?

Well I told them that one controller wasn't working and that I could send it back which they politely offered the discount. I then contacted Nvidia support for an RMA for the controller so should get the controller fixed and/ or a replacement on top of the discount. Just quote the link to the controller via their website and offer to send it back like I did.

Nice. Is that 70 euro per Shield or for both of them?

I too received my units. Both were marked. One had a controller which didn't work. I'd say in my case Very Good would have applied to the condition not "like new" which is what I bought. Amazon.fr have given a 70 euro refund upon complaint, which I can live with as these units would likely cost more in this condition via ebay regardless.

Eh...received my 'Like New' Shield today and it is beyond scratched. It's as if they put this poor thing through a blender. Very dissapointed, and frankly, surprised...I've bought Amazon UK warehouse items many times and the quality has always been impeccable (even 'Used - Very Good' ones).

Probably should have paid extra and got a brand new one off eBay...

Best Android TV on the market period, I also use it to stream games from PC located in my office upstairs to the TV in the living room.

​voucher?

​voucher?

Christ, doesn't matter what hardware the receiving machine has all the encoding is done on your pc...

You had a bit to get off your chest, good for you. You must feel a little better now that rant is over!

I see dead people.... I will need to clear that up before the neighbors complain about the Smell

i see 199 euros

Download retroarch and put roms on your sd card! :smiley: YouTube videos will help

bbc iplayer keeps getting removed after reboot on mine.

You'd probably make a profit if you list on ebay - have seen non-hard disk used ones going for £140 plus.

Thanks I'll check it out​

No decent brands just junk like bush digihome etc

This is really over priced for a year old box at £16 more than i paid a year ago.
This has been the worst black friday of the last 4 years. Amazon just get rid of their junk now. Nothing decent.
Blu-rays such as Prometheus box set and Dark knight box set selling for £2 more than 2 years ago!!
Outside of video games it's been very poor.
Clearly inflation from planning for Brexit effecting it.
The MOTO G4 best uk deal was £139 on the moto store with codes.
It's selling on amazon dot com for only $129.

​Ive had one of these for a year now. only ever gets used as kodi box. how do you play classic or retro games apart from the games on the play store. Any info would be much appreciated.

Cold I bought this for £119.99 a year ago. This should be cheaper by now.

Got the deal last black friday and came with the controller and remote. ...and got to say never had a single probably with it.
Got kodi installed and a really nice build and streams like a dream, no issue .
Also got plex all setup and plays my fines from my pc and server fine.

Personally haven't got a bad word to say about it.
Some of the comments about buggy ...specially with kodi could be an issue with the build or addons that are being used.

But for this price well worth

Wish I had bought shares in Nvidia in January, they have trebled since then.

shows £182.55 on mine

These are like gold dust. Ordered two, one for ebay.

I own this, I got for £99 ... good for multimedia, blazing fast ... not using for gaming though ... No good android games though, make sure you have compatible laptop before buying ... monthy subscription available though ...

I have both and the shield is much better at streaming games..

Love mine, had a problem with the remote control but got it replaced.

Hardware isn't the same at all. I currently have a Shield and a link and when compared both wire and wifi shield quality is far superior.

They use exactly the same encoder for streaming so have the same quality. Select hardware encoding for Nvidia and tick the NVBFC option in the steam host machine and its exactly the same. Stop talking out of your **** basically.

Better off with a Steam Link

Had my shield since July, absolutely love it only getting interested in the plex side the last few days will give it a go. Bang on for retro gaming and reads ntfs hard drives so use them with Kodi all tagged to play my files.

Use the fire tv remote as it's cheaper and has more buttons. May buy another

I've had three shield for nearly a year now and overall I've been very happy with it. Last week though the sound stopped working via HDMI, contacted Amazon and they sent me a replacement.

I use it a lot for Plex, it can be quite buggy though. Frequently crashes and struggles to play large files.

Emulators work a treat on it. Hate the nvidia controller though, it's way too big. Remote control is awesome though, love the voice search on it.

I've only used gamestream a few times and I didn't like it very much, very clunky, may give it another go as that was a while ago and updates may have improved there experience.

I'm very happy with mine and use it everyday.

Another great post. I was going to wait as I've got amazon vouchers coming my way but at this price I couldn't resist.

As a big fan of Plex the server option is the selling point for me.

Just personal experience and the experiences of a few others I know who have had them really.

No idea about wider issues.

The query was for bsmaff but seeing as you've responded....these "other people", do you know them personally or are you just generalising based on some google searches?. The least reliable unit, in my opinion (also based on google searches - pre purchase), is the 500gb version. I've read a number of reports of slowness / freezing which I understand Nvidia have been trying to remedy for folks.

Not really seen any extensive reports of issues with the 16GB flash memory version. Not saying there aren't any but I'd argue they are a small fraction of the 16GB Shield user base.

Either way at present many folks would rip your hand off to get hold of one of these :stuck_out_tongue:

Random question time! How do I add my external movie hard drive to kodi so it's listed in movies on the sheild? Tia

My controller is weird, needs a lot of power before it syncs with Bluetooth, but then when it does sync it works for quite a while!

If your looking at doing emulators its worth buying ARC BROWSER from the store to keep all your games nice and neat and easy to access

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaoZU2KaAYY

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.floatingpoint.android.arcturus&hl=en_GB

Ive managed to get most systems up and running okay, a few that should run like dreamcast and gamecube I haven't got working yet but to be honest I didn't try for very long!

Also I tend to get MUCH better live stream quality on this than a kodi stick? So even for Kodi its kinda worth it, and you can get 5.1 sound also if your interested in that and have the set up so its a good option compared to the cheap boxes

Just sent mine back. Very disappointed as my main reason for buying it was to replace my ageing HTPC so I could get 4k video and bit stream HD audio which my HTPC couldn't do.

Installed SPMC and followed the guides to getting audio and video optimised on GitHub but still couldn't get a decent image. Then I read about the firmware bug where the Shield always reverts to sending RGB instead of 4:4:4 YCbCr when you set SPMC to adjust the screen's refresh rate.

Was also never able the controller to sync so had too use a USB keyboard and the Shield often wouldn't turn on.

I think they're unreliable because a lot of people that own them have had reliability issues.

I've been through one box, one pad, and about three remotes.

All exchanged for free by Nvidia, but a bit of a hassle.

Exactly my reason and I am without a working computer at the moment and seeing videos on how to do this, just haven't been bothered. Shame I couldn't just buy it already complete and easy to download via the system only.

Tried streaming pc games but haven't really made much use of this feature. I found that my Ethernet Powerline adapters (Zyxel 500mbit) just couldn't cut it. Games wouldn't play without heavy compression making them look shizer.

Then my Zyxels packed in and I purchased the TPLink AV1200 kit....wow....night and day difference. All of a sudden high bit rate movies would play perfectly every time. Tried streaming pc games again with GeForce experience and they were bang on 1080p 60fps. What's more I hadn't expected that the Shield would support 3D but it does. Tried Crysis 2, Batman and Tomb Raider and they all played in 3D on my Samsung 3D TV :smiley:

I may revisit the gaming aspect in the future but just happy enough at present with all the Shield's other features.

Ah I guess the price did go up... Still a good deal at £136 for like new though...

For better experience, use SPMC instead of KODI, much more stable especially for the Shield. Constantly had issues with KODI, crashes, hangs force close and non responsive.

Apart from the auto update issues with the build we use on SPMC we have never any of the repeat issues we got with KODI.

As for Gaming, with a well configured Retroarch install and decent Memory Card you can have the ultimate Emulator with enough power to even run PS2 and Gamecube games. Plus games such as Doom, Resident Evil, Half Life, Portal, Borderlands. And Geforce Now, purchase games when on sale you get an install on Shield TV and Tablet plus a Key for Steam.

As for issues, apart from a slight mishap that happened at home, we had ours kindly replaced under warranty by Scan.

A few bugs do exist but regular updates come from NVIDIA, only issue we see a lot is in certain games when you have both Remote and Controller synced and both switched on it affects some games, simply forget remote accessory whilst playing and remember to resync when finished.

I ordered two units like new this morning at £126 each. Increased the price as per your comments.

The £136 is actually under bank rate (converted from euros) - it was £141 under Amazon conversion. Also pretty sure the price hasn't gone up, the used and like new were €185.96 and €191.96 respectively - same as it was when the deal was posted...

I got 1 of the early release boxes and controller from game :disappointed:

The controller, whilst its a good idea - realistically its just junk.

Streaming was cluncky

its trash I bought one from game last week when the were on offer.

Steam link is a pile of junk!

I literally have never streamed a single game.

But i do watch any film/tv channel/tv show/football match that i want :smiley:

Steam link is £16 :smiley:

make sure you pay in euros and not at Amazons exchange rate.

​Hope it stays that way for you.
I had 3 all with the same basic issues and a separate issue each, just hit good measure.
Tech support were dire. Hung up on, lied to and they were clearly either untrained or clueless.
A shame cos I wanted to like it

Price likely shifting upwards as they are being sold. Amazon have an algarthem thingy

I've had one for a few months. I'm continually having to re synch the controller which is super annoying.
I use kodi (only with local files, no streaming) and it's poor. When it works it is great but stutters regularly, stops playing quite a few files etc. Is very frustrating.

It also drops Internet connection occasionally despite being connected via ethernet.

Not sure if part of the problem was because I merged the storage on the micro sd so it's treated as an internal drive (as was the only way I could see it appear on internal network for transferring files, I tried ftp etc but couldn't find it otherwise)

If anyone has advice on the tweaking I'd be grateful!

You are most welcome

Thanks OP - voted hot. Although I'm curious how you got £126 delivered for the like new. I'm getting a total of €160.27, which, even under the best rate, works out to £136.01. Am I going wrong somewhere?

how does it compare to a steam link?

It's a slick unit but I dislike the touch sensitive on/off/stand-by button, I also find myself re-syncing the controller on a fairly regular basis. On the software side Android TV seems to be fairly clunky and full of bugs.

I don't really know what to say about Kodi, they blame plug-ins for instability but they're one of the main reasons to use the program. There should always be an option to kill the process if it's causing it to hang, I'm sick to death of full hardware resets to fix an unresponsive box.

My NAS died and attraching a 2tb drive to the shield seemed to either bottom out or I can delete anything from it.

My Asus router. Damn! it worked and its perfect! Didnt even think about it! thanks sir!

An awesome piece of kit.

Thanks been waiting for this.

Similar to yourself. I stream movies to the Shield without issue. I have a 128GB micro sd installed for apps etc, a 500GB 2.5" hard drive attached for local storage, a 6TB NAS for archived media and a 2TB NAS for current media. The shield works as a fantastic media hub :smiley:

Item selling for around 150 - 170 on Ebay in used condition with no warranty. This is a good deal.

I would not worry too much, all is safe http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/advice/how-will-brexit-affect-my-consumer-rights

lol at least we are still members for the next two years!

Maybe not for too much longer :disappointed:

Someone you don't like then judging by your opinion of the box :stuck_out_tongue:

What's the conversion fee for Santander or Barclaycard? Never bought anything in euros before thanks

Yes it's around 12tb.

very hot deal. only 1 left in stock

I got the 500gb model and I love mine.
Have downloaded all the .EMU emulators and I'm in retro gaming heaven.

Excellent box and high specs.

But unless your streaming PC games it is pointless and better off saving a lot of money..

They are also quite unreliable so 30 day warranty is worrying I have had 3 different ones in a year as different things have gone wrong with them.

I tend to hook a 2tb external HDD up to my Asus router. No connection or speed issues or glitches of any kind. Sounds like you have a significant library.

Love mine, got Kodi retro mania build on mine, 8000 retro games and counting on mine

I tend to just give them away to friends and family tbh so someone will get it for xmas.

Had mine for 6 months now and I love it especially for Kodi

Awful experience with three of these and tech support is diabolical. Cold from me I'm afraid

The shield could not handle 3 external drives with a powered hub and kept crashing and would not start up properly, meaning I had to shut it down manually. On every reboot I had to tell the shield what I wanted the drives for.
I had to reset the library five times and it took over 24 hours to add the the media every time.
Also adding to the drives is a pain as it will not remember to share with the PC and I had to unmount the drives and connect to PC.
I am sure if you have a very small library it works fine but for me it was next to useless.

Any warranty on like new?

I bought a 500gb model to use as a Plex server but it is slow and would constantly crash , so don't get one for that. Went back to using PC for plex as far superior. Mine just collects dust now as I don't have an Nvidia card to use it for game streaming and the native games are far too expensive and quite old.

Plus point - quite small so fits nicely in the draw now without taking too much space. Would probably also make quite a good door wedge due to shape.
Only buy if you have a Nvidia card and need it to game stream otherwise there are cheaper devices for 4K video streaming.

I too had to return a couple of units Wifi Chip not working and overheating and shutdown issue.

just bought one from ebay £140 superb for movies, kodi, gaming etc. Just all multimedia and entertainment you need supported by one device.

I've bought one to run the many emulators that are out there but never got round to setting it up.

You can use a Plex server and speaking as someone who has a 4K tv with 4K apps. Netflix and Youtube are way better on this. I also have an Xbox one S and have to admit its worth it just for those functions and decent voice search.

Order summary
Articles: EUR 185.96
Delivery : EUR 8.20
total: EUR 194.16
Voucher: 37,19 EUR box
(Total amount: EUR 156.97)
Total payment: GBP 138.68

Can't live without mine. Snap it up and voted hot

good price for a fantastic machine :smiley: